1. Field of the Invention
The present invention generally relates to heat dissipation in electronic devices and, in a preferred embodiment thereof, more particularly relates to apparatus for dissipating heat from heat generating electronic components, such as high speed processors, in computers.
2. Description of Related Art
As computer processors are provided with higher and higher clock speeds, they generate correspondingly greater amounts of heat which must be efficiently dissipated by an appropriate cooling system to prevent performance degradation and/or processor damage. In addition to the processor, the cooling system must also cool the associated memory components and densely populated I/O cards. At frequencies of 100 MHz and higher, signal lengths from the processor, memory, and I/O bridges to the common memory controller are critical and dictate that the processor, memory components and I/O cards be positioned in close adjacency to the common memory controller.
This component proximity requirement, as a practical matter, dictates that the processor, memory components and I/O cards be positioned in a compact three dimensional relationship instead of being positioned in parallel in the same general plane as may be done with lower clock speed components. The requisite compact three dimensional arrangement for these related components precludes the traditional cooling approach of simply placing finned metal heat sinks on the processor and blowing air across the heat sinks and the processor-related memory and I/O card components since it is quite difficult to properly route cooling air through backplane boards, around corners, and through other tortuous flow paths unavoidably present in three dimensional component arrangements.
Another problem arising from this three dimensional/close proximity component arrangement requirement is that service and upgrade access to the components is made more difficult. For example, if screws or fasteners were required to attach heat sink apparatus to the processor, the time and cost of removal and installation of the processor would be undesirably increased. If the processor were to be liquid cooled, special tubing would be required. The disconnection and reconnection of coolant tubing could easily pose a major servicing problem, along with requiring special tools.
From the foregoing it can be seen that the use of modern high speed computer processors poses three design problems. Namely, the processor, memory components and I/O cards must be (1) physically close to the common memory controller, (2) cooled to prevent overheating, and (3) positioned for ease of repair and upgrading. It is accordingly an object of the present invention to provide processor cooling apparatus that addresses and solves or at least substantially reduces these three problems.